


Say, Say, My Playmate, Come Out and Play with Me

by within_a_dream



Category: Wait Till Helen Comes - Mary Downing Hahn
Genre: Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 11:26:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12253470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/pseuds/within_a_dream
Summary: Helen is so very lonely--until she finds herself a friend. And another, and another...





	Say, Say, My Playmate, Come Out and Play with Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



> This book terrified me as a child, and I was thrilled to get the chance to write for it!
> 
> In addition to the tagged contents, this fic contains references to child abuse, and quite a bit of child death.
> 
> Thanks to T for betaing!

It happens because Helen is angry. She screams, and she swings her arms at her stepfather, and just like that, the room goes up in flames.

Helen runs, not looking behind her. Then she does look back, and her mother and stepfather are still in the room, a wall of fire separating her from them. She tries to go back to them, but it’s so, so hot. Her skin feels shriveled, and each breath burns her throat.

“Helen!” her mother shouts. Then there’s a crash, and Helen can’t even see their outlines through the fire anymore. _The floor_ , she realizes. _They’ve fallen through the floor_. She runs again, flames licking at her heels and smoke stinging her eyes.

She makes it out the door, into the yard. Then she stumbles, and falls through the ground. _Just like my parents_ , she thinks, and then, _the millpond_ , and then, _it’s so cold._

 

Helen watches the townsfolk come running when they see the flames, watches them try to douse the fire, watches them search in vain for her mother and stepfather and her. She watches her body sway at the bottom of the millpond, when the crowds leave and there’s nothing left to see at the house. She watches herself turn into something unrecognizable and drift to the surface, and she watches as a man on a walk finally, finally spots her. She watches when they bury her, although something tugs her back to the millpond before long, a fish-hook in her breastbone.

Helen sits at the bottom of the pond, feeling the cold sink into her bones.

 

The first child is an accident. A girl a few years younger than Helen wanders past the house one day (long after Helen was buried) and finds her way to the millpond. She leans over the edge, and waves.

People don’t see Helen. She’s sat down on her grave and sobbed, followed walkers around shrieking, hovered an inch from people’s noses—they don’t see her.

The girl sees her.

Helen waves back.

The girl leans even further, giggling. She lifts an arm to wave again, and tumbles head-over-heels into the pond.

Helen darts back and watches her fall, not sure she could do anything even if she wanted. The girl’s pretty gingham dress snags on a log, and she only struggles for a little while before she goes still. Then she floats away from her body, looking over at Helen with her lip quivering.

“Oh, don’t cry!” Helen takes her hand and darts towards the other shore. “I’m Helen. What’s your name?”

The girl lets out a sad little sniffle. “Paulina.”

 

It’s so wonderful to have a playmate again. Paulina knows rhymes and games that Helen has never heard of, and the days in the pond pass faster with a friend. She’s a little blue when her parents come looking, and when her body surfaces, but Helen soon distracts her.

Then one day Paulina begins to sulk, and doesn’t stop. “I want to go home!” she sniffs when Helen tries to cajole her into a game or a song. Day by day, she sits on the log at the center of the pond, toying with the scrap of gingham trapped by the branch. Day by day, she grows more translucent.

Then, one day, Helen can’t see her at all. One minute Paulina is looking over her shoulder at something Helen can’t see, the next, she’s gone. Helen is alone again.

She can’t be alone again.

 

The next girls take coaxing, but they come into the pond, one by one. Trudie hates her new brother, who screams all night and who her stepmother loves more than her. She stays longer than Paulina, but when she fades away, Helen knows what she has to do next. Jo has a bruise on her cheek when she comes running to the pond in tears, but she barely lasts any time at all, and besides, she’d always been blathering on about her mother, who’d died the last year and left her alone with her father. Bridget stays away from the millpond at first ( _Mama told me it’s dangerous_ ), but Helen draws her in with a gift of her locket.

 

And then Rose, who comes to the pond on a summer day so hot that it nearly chases the cold inside Helen away, shucks her socks and shoes, and dangles her feet in the water.

“Stupid Mommy!” she mutters, eyes screwed up in anger.

Helen sits down beside her. Rose, lost in thought, doesn’t notice for a while. When she does, she brushes away her tears with a guilty look on her face.

“Mothers can be cruel,” Helen says, smiling a bit. When Rose starts to stand up, Helen takes her hand. “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you off! I’m Helen.”

“I’m Rose.” She sits back down, kicking her feet in the water. “Where do you live? I didn’t know there were kids here, besides my cousins.”

“I live here.” Helen smiles. “But you can’t tell anyone. It’ll be our secret.”

Rose smiles back. “A secret! Can I tell _you_ a secret?”

“Of course.”

But Rose doesn’t say anything after that, for long enough that Helen thinks she’s changed her mind. Then she tells her, “My mom forgot my birthday.”

Helen scowls. “What a horrible thing to do to your daughter!” She reaches for her locket, clasped around her neck since Bridget faded. “Here, I have a gift for you. To make up for it.”

Rose hooks the locket around her neck, smiling. Then she reaches out a hand. “Friends?”

Helen shakes her hand. “Friends.”

 

Helen isn’t sure what Rose’s mother has done. Rose is angry with her, but when Helen asks, she dances around the details. When Rose does talk about her, it’s that she missed taking Rose to school or going to Rose’s recital or driving Rose to a friend’s house because she was “sleeping”, or “sick”.

No matter. They’re friends, and Rose won’t take much more convincing to come into the millpond with Helen.

 

Rose’s body barely settles at the bottom of the pond before the policemen come looking for her. Their carriages run by themselves and flash bright lights that dance across the waves caused by the diver they send after the body. Rose huddles close to Helen, biting her lip to see herself in the arms of the strange man wearing a skintight black suit.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Helen asks, and Rose nods.

The way Rose’s mother sways and slurs her words at the funeral slides the pieces into place. She was sick, like Rose said, but from drink. Rose buries her face in Helen’s shoulder when her mother begins to sob over her grave.

 

Rose’s mother walks to the millpond the next day. Rose is sulking in the depths, but Helen floats to the surface and gives her a wave. Recognition lights up her eyes, and she hurls the bottle in her hand through Helen’s face. Helen grins and sinks back down, the water muffling Rose’s mother’s  shrieks. “You took my daughter! You took her!”

Rose stays for longer than any of Helen’s other friends. But eventually she too fades away, and Helen is so very lonely.

 

And then a new family moves into the church, and another little girl comes wandering down to the millpond. Her name is Heather, she tells Helen, and her daddy has married a horrible woman with two horrible children. Heather’s mommy died in a fire, you see, and Daddy promised they’d always be a family, but now he’s gone and found a _new_ family and Heather _hates_ them.

Heather will be perfect.


End file.
